http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
IN the last presidential election a Jewish candidate for the second
highest office in the land received more of the popular vote than his
non-Jewish opponent. To any sensible person this would have indicated that in
America anti-Semitism is deader than a lava lamp or a hula hoop and is simply
waiting to be interred in that great graveyard of bankrupt political
philosophies along with White Supremacy, The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity
Sphere and Deutschland Uber Alles.

But, unfortunately anti-Semitism is alive
and well and still lives on. We are not talking about the likes of Leonard
Jefferies, Jesse Jackson and Calypso Louie Farrakhan, all of whom have the
decency to talk out of both sides of their mouths, one side saying
anti-Semitic things and the other side saying the former side didn't really
mean what it said. We are talking about the self-hating Jews of Tenafly, and
how it took a piece of string to bring them out of the closet.

An eruv is a symbolic border, usually a piece of string that is placed
around a home or synagogue. Orthodox Jews are allowed to perform certain
tasks within the borders of the eruv that would ordinarily be denied to them
on the Sabbath or other holy days. Particularly affected are young Jewish
families who would otherwise be prohibited from taking their strollers and
baby carriages outside of their homes due to the prohibition of carrying on these days. An eruv, which makes the area it encloses one large domain, thus permits them to take their
children out of doors to move about and play within its parameters.

All of this seemed harmless enough until the town and particularly it's
Jewish mayor, Ann Moscovitz, found out that this sort of thing was happening.
One would think that Hannibal Lechter moved into Tenafly and was going to
open a butcher shop.

The town and its Jewish mayor moved both in the courts
and legislatively to prevent the creation of the eruvs. No sensible reason
was offered why the Orthodox should not be allowed to hang the string. They
could not make a separation of church and state argument since the courts had
already ruled that to allow eruvs is merely an accommodation to a religion,
not an establishment of one. They could not say that the strings are
eyesores, since they are usually hung along power lines, and are therefore
virtually invisible. Nor could they say there was a danger of tripping over
them since you would have to be a member of the Knicks to even reach them.

The real reason, of course, for Mayor Moscovitz and her colleagues' panic
was that they believed in the cockroach theory. Once you let some in, soon a
flood of them will follow. They wanted to disassociate themselves from those
kind of Jews, didn't want them in the neighborhood and didn't want outsiders
to associate them with those kinds of Jews. The fact that you observe the
same kind of dynamic in African-Americans, Hispanics and other immigrant
groups makes it no less offensive.

The only area in which you can get away with this sort of self-hating
behavior is in humor. An African- American can tell a racial joke about his
kinsman with the same kind of immunity that a Jewish comedian receives when
he tells a joke in stereotypical Jewish dialect. Our advise to Ms. Moscovitz
and her colleagues: if Orthodox Jews moving into your community makes you
nervous, don't run to court, or call special sessions of the legislature.
Tell a couple of jokes about them. Otherwise the joke will be on you. Talking
about jokes, did you hear the one about the Jewish mayor who was putting on
her corset and saw this piece of string that
she...